A Fresno Story of Partnership and Power When Fresno passed ordinances limiting where, when and how street food vendors could operate, Cultiva La Salud and its partners mobilized to fight back. Executive Director Genoveva Islas shares how the organization expanded its 2025 work by joining forces with allies skilled in advocacy and communications, combining those … Continued
Category Archives: Build
Healthy Schools Campaign
Building the Systems That Keep Green Infrastructure Working Building a green schoolyard is one thing. Making sure it still works a decade later—capturing stormwater, serving students, strengthening a neighborhood—is something else entirely. In Chicago, Healthy Schools Campaign is tackling that harder, less visible challenge head-on. “While significant investments have been made in public green infrastructure, … Continued
Marygrove Conservancy
From Campus to Community: Marygrove Conservancy Imagines What’s Possible In 2025, the Marygrove Conservancy shifted its focus from simply introducing itself to the neighborhood to co-creating a future. The organization’s community engagement evolved from information-sharing to deep, collaborative dreaming about the campus and the surrounding Fitzgerald neighborhood’s potential. “Over the last few years, the once … Continued
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Defending Families Today, Building a Stronger System for Tomorrow In a year of rapid policy shifts, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities built a four-part strategy to blunt harmful policies, document real-time impacts on families and seize every opportunity for progress. From helping stop some of the most extreme cuts to food assistance to … Continued
Community Desk Chicago
Chicago’s Bold Bet on Shared Ownership Community Desk Chicago pivoted in 2025 to launch Wealth Our Way (WOW)—a comprehensive shared ownership initiative designed to address decades of disinvestment in Chicago neighborhoods. WOW empowers residents to collectively own and control commercial real estate through community investment vehicles and worker co-ops. In its first round, the program … Continued
Health Leads
Laying the Groundwork for a Public Health System Built by Communities The federal public health infrastructure didn’t just weaken in 2025, large parts of it were dismantled. For Health Leads, that rupture created an uncomfortable but real opening: if the old systems were being torn down, communities could have a hand in shaping what comes … Continued
Civilla
Designing Medicaid Applications That Don’t Push People Off Coverage When Congress passed H.R. 1 and its new Medicaid work requirements, states faced a ticking clock. They had a limited window to implement the rules, and the choices they made—about forms, online systems, letters and verification steps—would determine whether millions of eligible people kept their coverage … Continued
Race Forward
Reorganizing for the Fight That’s Here When the federal government dismantled its racial equity infrastructure in early 2025, Race Forward didn’t try to rebuild what was lost in Washington. It redirected—deliberately, strategically—toward the places where the work could go deeper. Glenn Harris, Race Forward’s president, said: “The conditions are hard. The work is essential. We … Continued
Just Solutions
Building the Table When It Matters Most When the federal administration changed in 2025, Just Solutions didn’t scramble. It was ready. The organization had spent the second half of 2024 running scenario planning exercises to map out what a hostile federal landscape could look like and what the climate justice field would need in response. … Continued
Economic Security Project
Making Cash Policy Stick The idea that direct cash helps people isn’t new anymore. What’s new is that it’s becoming harder to undo. “Life transitions, like starting or growing a family, aging out of foster care, the aftermath of climate disaster, returning home after incarceration, or changing jobs are inherent moments of instability. Providing a … Continued
Building Power Resource Center
Scaling Clean Energy from the Ground Up When federal climate action stalled in 2025, a lot of clean energy work slowed down with it. Building Power Resource Center didn’t have that experience because its model was never built around waiting for Washington. Founded in late 2023, BPRC provides hands-on strategy and technical assistance to community … Continued
Martha O’Bryan Center
Building a System That Rewards Progress Imagine getting a raise at work—and ending up poorer because of it. That is the reality of the benefits cliff, a systemic flaw in America’s public safety net that punishes the very progress it is supposed to support. When an individual’s income rises even modestly, they can lose government … Continued
Culture & Community Power Fund
When Communities Build Power, They Don’t Let Go In a year of growing antipathy toward immigrants and refugees, the Culture & Community Power Fund made a decisive move: investing just under one million dollars in the very communities under pressure, supporting them to organize, create, and lead with culture at the center. Across Memphis, New … Continued
Project South
Where Young Voices Build Power In the historically Black neighborhoods of South Atlanta—10 communities once known as Brownsville and among the first settled by Black people after emancipation—Project South is reclaiming a legacy and building a future. From its headquarters at the Mutual Aid Liberation Center, the organization confronts the pressures of gentrification and state … Continued